Oh, and history is relevant too I guess… But Heinlein people!
Could we, in our modern societies, have a workable and beneficial system of citizenship which have different levels? A central pillar of both the US and the EU systems of rights is that they apply to everyone equally, so this would be the first and I think major stumbling block of trying to break society into groups. Also there are two quite different directions this could go in. Having a regular class of people and an underclass of criminals/slaves, for example, is very different to regular citizen/citizen plus additional rights.
One of the suggestions in the extreme thread I liked was the notion of having a sort of point score for different things which could add up to different levels of citizenship. One starts at a basic level of citizenship, but through having an unbroken credit history, never committing crimes/committing few crimes/volunteering etc one could get promoted to higher ranks in society, with the highest ones being reserved for elected office and government positions (higher ranks mean your votes count more too). I quite like that idea because evidence shows that you need punishment and reward to get the best out of a system. Rewards are frequently more of an incentive than punishment, and I have to say I often feel as a 100% law abiding citizen that I don’t get very much back as a result (but if I ever do anything wrong the legal system will come CRASHING down on me, you just know it).
In Heinlein’s book the population is divided into civilians and citizens, the latter being able to vote and hold government positions whilst the former can’t. To acquire citizenship one would have to undertake service and earn it, which the book doesn’t state is always military service but it seems to be how a lot of people get to become citizens. The rationale is that only those who are willing to put themselves in danger for the good of society should be given the right to decide how that society works, or be trusted with the power to do so. The book is often accused of depicting a vaguely fascist society so I’m not certain it’s a great example, but again this appeals to me as I don’t personally believe that the vote of a person who contributes nothing to society should count as much as someone who is law abiding, diligent and gives of themselves to others.
To get this out of the way I think any system that ties standing in society to money is a fantastically bad idea, or you simply end up with a class of rich people who can potentially live free from the consequences of their actions whilst the poor must never make a mistake or be screwed for the rest of their lives (oh, wait, that’s exactly what we have now…)
So what do we think? Let’s do possible and desirable as separate things in our responses. Possible is, of course, pretty much a given because we’ve had plenty of societies that have had systems where people have differing levels of rights (Romans being one example, but then so is pre-emancipation US for a less pleasant example). But I don’t think anyone’s attempted to set up a system like this by design where it was supposed to be for everyone’s overall benefit (rather than just to single out and punish a set of people a la Nazi Germany). That said second class citizen is always used as a pejorative term as no-one wants to be one, but should everyone be guaranteed the right to be treated the same as everyone else, despite what they’ve done (or not done?).
Any system that separates citizens into deserving/undeserving categories will almost instantly become corrupt as the citizens with power bend the rules to keep their children in the privileged group. The result will inevitably be legitimized nepotism and the eventual destruction of any semblance of meritocracy.
Universal suffrage is the best guarantee we have for making sure that our leaders are actually competent.
Another SF example is Pournelle’s Prince of Sparta, where the humans on the planet Sparta, founded several generations ago, have a government designed by political scientists and apparently on classical models. There’s an elected assembly, I think, and a Senate chosen some complicated way that can take control in an emergency (Ultimate Decree). Even the heir to the throne (well, one of two thrones in the same kingdom, as in ancient Sparta) at one point remarks, “I’d hate to have to try to explain it.” Citizens (mostly descendants of the original colonists) have to earn their citizenship through militia-service and pass some exams, and are raised to do just that. There’s a “helot” class of non-citizens, mostly more recent immigrants/deportees from Earth, who cannot vote or hold office, and at the time of the book are a significant minority or perhaps majority of the population. The helots rebel over their demand for the franchise. This is portrayed as very extremely evil. The helots are not slaves, and some who get ahead (or their kids) can hope to earn citizenship, and there is no apparent way in which they are deprived of any rights but those of political participation.
But, looking at history, that is not realistic. Usually, any group that is deprived of political participation while others have it is relegated to second-class status or worse in all other respects as well.
Yes I fully endorse this plan, especially the bit about elected officials having the best class of citizenship.
I would also add the following:
Citizenship points have a monetary value established by the free market, and may be traded freely at will without tax or penalty.
Elected officials should have hundreds of times the citizenship points of normal, average people.
Citizenship points will have a reasonable expiration date, so people don’t get complacent halfway through their lives. This applies to lazy retirees. If they aren’t buying or earning citizenship points, they are a drain on society and deserve to lose their status.
Citizenship points should be fully transferable and inheritable without tax or penalty.
Only people with enough citizenship points should be able to do any of the following things (various different point levels apply to each category):
-vote
-raise children
-buy a house
-buy a car
-Each constitutional protection requires a certain amount of citizenship points. Don’t have enough points? No free speech for you! Just shy of the limit for the right to bare arms, NO GUNS FOR YOU EITHER!
This will certainly be the greatest society ever!!!
If you create castes, what you’re going to get are… surprise!.. castes. And there is no chance, none whatsoever, that the castes won’t become hereditary. No system devisable and practically implementable by humans will overcome the human tendency to want their children to fall out of caste.
A lot of the points you are talking about can be up to chance. If someone has a serious illness they can lose their job and go bankrupt. They lose 10+ points just by having cancer.
Not only that, but having high points doesn’t mean you are a good person. It could just means you know how to hide your bad side. Jerry Sandusky had a lot of points before he was arrested (high income, tons of work with charity, well educated, etc). The system would be easy for sociopaths to manipulate so they could rise to higher levels, then use those higher levels to commit acts of cruelty towards those lower on the social totem pole.
Being laid off in a bad economy or developing a serious illness can destroy your credit history. So that will take points off. Things like that are a problem with the system.
Plus most people who have a good credit score or avoid breaking the law do so because they don’t want the negative consequences and want the positive benefits already (the ability to get cheaper loans, pride, etc). Maybe adding positive consequences would help too. But you need an expungement period (with driving, your tickets no longer count after 2 years. Some background checks only go back 5 or 7 years, etc). If people do not think they can recover from losing points, they will lose hope.
It seems like in your system the top tier would be composed of relatively few people who have most of the power. The problem with these types of systems is that as a member of the elite you’ll vote/legislate/judge in a manner that maximizes your benefit, which will probably end up pissing off those below you. Unfortunately, there’s always a lot more of “them” than there are of “you,” and soon enough they start fomenting, the unwashed masses come streaming in, and you’re finished. Revolution, man. Your carefully thought out citizenship structure won’t do you any good when you’re being torn apart by an angry mob. Ask Marie Antionette, Nicholas II, Puyi or Ghaddafi how it worked out for them and their friends.
Actually, the US does have a system similar to the one you describe, it’s just inverted. Instead of getting more rights/privileges/power for being good, we get fewer rights/privileges/power for being bad. Prisoners and convicted felons usually can’t vote, in many states a felony conviction will disenfranchise you for life. They’re also barred from holding certain offices. I find this pretty easy to swallow, but I’m sure someone could make the argument that it reduces the political power of people on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder.
Obviously, the vote/no-vote duopoly described in Starship Troopers and other SF stories is easily corrupted and generally unworkable.
However, I think that the idea of weighted voting described in Reynold’s ‘The Prefect’ might be more useful and desirable. Essentially there would be some means of deciding after the fact if a vote was ‘correct’ or particularly well thought out, and then people who consistently make the ‘right’ votes begin to have more influence by nature of having each of their votes count for 1.5, or 2 or 3 or more votes, etc. No matter how poorly you chose everyone still got 1 vote as well. Some of the characters used their votes to curry favors and induce ‘lobbying’, but they had to still think and take care with their votes, because they could easily lose their weighted average and regress back to a single vote.
Even still you would have the problems of people deciding what constituted ‘right’ and the fact that it would require a direct rather than representative democracy. These problems were dealt with in the story by typical SF-woo: a benevolent and incorruptible supercomputer AI evaluated the votes and everyone voted constantly via neural nanotechnology. So if we can get those two little things out of the way it would probably work really well.
I’ve read this several times and genuinely can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not. Replace “citizenship points” with “money” and you’ve essentially got what we have now, but worse, which I specifically said we shouldn’t be aiming for. If you really meant what you posted then please correct me.
A lot of people are saying “in all societies that have done this…” whilst failing totally to look at the one historical example I gave. A caste is one in which one is born into their class, and they can’t ever leave it. A system with multiple levels of citizenship could end up becoming a caste, but it’s not a given. In Roman society people could work or buy themselves out of slavery, people could earn Roman citizenship, but then people could become slaves through crime or becoming indebted to someone. There was a caste element in Rome in the form of the Patrician/Plebian classes, but by the time Julius Caesar took control plebs could hold office and be extremely rich, so it wasn’t quite a stiffling as you might think (and this was going from a system of clear separation of classes with one having more rights to a situation when it was less so, so it doesn’t always get “more caste-y”).
Walk down the street and a lot of people will qualify for citizen plus, in the local ghetto? Probably less so. Just because someone thinks they’re a good citizen doesn’t mean they are, and I would argue that universal franchise with no qualification is effectively the same as making everyone a citizen plus in your problem scenario.
My point is it doesn’t have to be, and if you built it strongly on democratic lines the point wouldn’t be for one segment of society to control everything, it would be for some people to demonstrate that their views count more than others. Again, I genuinely think this should be the case - you’re telling me that someone who can’t even tell me what the positions in a debate are, or what the candidates represent, should have exactly as much say in something as someone who has done their research and can present reasoned arguments for their positions? Where else, exactly, does that system ever happen? In any hierarchical system some people have more power and influence over others due to experience, qualification or something else. Do you run a company on the notion that the office intern should have an equal say in company policy as the board of directors? And yet companies aren’t taken over by angry mobs. Why is it any different?
Indeed, so you have in fact just got punishment and no reward, kind of the worst of the situation.
I sense a bit of scoffing towards the end, but who’s to say that you couldn’t do more of that when computing isn’t more widespread to the point of total ubiquity? In Sweden everyone has a personal number (a bit like a social security number) allocated by the government, it allows them to apply for any good or service as a reference point without having to demonstrate they’re not someone who’s going to run off - the number always makes them traceable. Now extend that principle to something like an online identity number or citizenship number that you plug into your phone and you can vote on stuff whenever you want when issues come up. You don’t need a supercomputer to add up the totals of votes.
Children under 18. And of course the age requirements for various public offices.
Heinleins society could probably work, and could even have some positive benefits, but would also carry its own separate issues. Try as you might, there would still be some discrimination between the classes.
To the last post, add people who have been declared incapable by the courts. Not necessarily felons, it could be someone with dementia.
And in countries with parliamentary systems there are citizens+, those who have been chosen to save the rest of us the work of having to discuss and vote about every single bill.
People who think the vote/no vote system is unworkable: you guys know it’s based on the Roman Republic, right? A lot of people had most of the rights which would be part of a citizen’s rights now, but not the right to vote; a lot of citizens did not have the right to vote.
:dubious: Bad example. You’re describing one of the things wrong with the RR, that and its stinginess with citizenship as such. Ever heard of the Social War?
Actually, as I was posting what I did, I was hoping someone would catch on to what you just pointed out.
We currently DO have a system where people earn citizenship points, in the form of money. We DO have different classes of citizens. So, no, I wasn’t being serious in my post at all, and I was intentionally listing whatever I could to make it clear that money = citizenship points, though to a slightly lesser extent than what I said citizenship points would get you in my theoretical society.
In Mark Twain’s “Curious Republic of Gondour,” you get an extra vote or two if you have enough money. But educational attainments also equate to extra votes, which are considered more prestigious because they are “immortal” votes – one can always lose one’s money and one’s money-votes. This is portrayed as a good thing because it gives people incentive to higher and higher education . . . like we ain’t got enough now.
It worked well enough until Aragorn restored the monarchy, but that’s another story.
I’m wondering about whether you’d have misgivings about your 100% lawful status. I maintain that all or nearly all citizens are criminals. You have no idea what’s been outlawed.
Kansas, for instance, outlaws any recording played over a telephone line, that does not state “This is a recording” with narrow exceptions for weather and sports information. “Ordinary” “sorry I missed your call” type messages are illegal under this statute and the last itme i looked into it (8 years ago) thirty-four states had a substantially similar law.
Don’t get me started, there are a dozen ways the ordinary citizen is a criminal and doesn’t have a clue.
It may be unreasonable, but so far as I know, this sort of unreasonability is not a defense at law.